Short stories/ descriptions

People watcher

He was there, always, with his shoulders and his eyes and his enticing expression of perpetual indifference, with his boots and his hair and his legs and his fingers, always flexing, always taught, always wanting to touch but not touching.

It fascinted me, his ability to remain immovable in this sea of unpredictability, his watchful eyes gliding, observing over everything, everything but me, that is.

He never noticed me anymore, but i noticed him, i noticed the length of his hair that never grew, i noticed the easy way he walked and sometimes talked and always looked at everything, i noticed his eyes and his mouth and his nose and his eyes and his ears and chin and his eyes.

They were like storms of smoke and ash, swirling with unleashed emotion, dancing in the midst of destruction and havoc like a relentless tornado, sucking me up and trapping me in their whirlwind of mystery.

He wasn't always brooding and standoffish, i know this because i watched him since long before the summer when all the girls began drooling.

He wasn't always like how he is now but he was always perfect, always worthy of my attention, always enveloping me in this sense of home.

Ever since i was seven and turned up halfway through the school year with a moth-bitten kardigain and crooked ponytails, he's been the highlight of my day. He doesn't remember, but he showed me around that day. He volunteered with a wriggling arm in the air, he smiled and he laughed and he showed me the way to the coat hangers and the toilet. He told me he liked my freckles and i told him thank you, he asked me my name and i told him something close to a lie that wasn't actually a lie but still made me whisper sorry under my breath so he couldn't hear my betrayal.

I was the weird girl with the dirty face that never got clean, i was the girl who got picked up last even on her birthday, i was the girl who told rosy-cheeked lies that no one noticed, i was the girl who brought a lunchbox filled with cobwebs and legos, the girl who pretended pieces of plastic had eaten her food while she wasn't looking...

I was the girl who went home to shattered glass on the kitchen floor, to police cars and yellow tape and endless strangers parading me through their homes, proclaiming i was safe, proclaiming they were happy to have me stay with them in their soundproof, padded houses of cosy blankets and giggles and warm food and peaceful sleep.

He was always there, my only constant, the boy i talked at when he was still at the lunch table after his friends left to go play footie, the boy who smiled when i told him about the mischievous characters in my lunchbox, the boy who offered the last bit of food left on his plate when he was full.

It was at Christmas the next year, almost a whole year after I'd first floated into his orbit, when he said goodbye for the holidays and never said hello again.